On 11/26/2014 9:53 AM, John Clark wrote:
No that is not fine. I DEFINE intelligence just as everybody else does, the ability to find novel solutions to new problems, the greater the variety of problems the greater the intelligence. I DEDUCE that if intelligent beings can be non-conscious then Darwin was wrong. My OPINION is that Darwin was not wrong.
I don't think that deduction is unqualifiedly valid. First, evolution permits what Gould called "spandrels". I don't think human consciousness is a spandrel, but it's possible. Second, there may be different ways of being intelligent (as game theorists will play NIM differently from most people) and human consciousness necessarily accompanied human intelligence because of the precursors (hominid intelligence) that evolution had to start with. For example, I think human consciousness and intelligence are both closely linked to language. Language is an evolutionarily useful adaptation of social animals. But I see no reason that no-social animals cannot be intelligent (e.g. ocotopi are solitary by are the most intlligent non-vertebrates). This implies that there can be intelligent beings without language and therefore without anything like human-consciousness; although they would have consciousness in Bruno's sense of "being aware".
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